Video shows KCPD officer restraining man by the neck at grocery store: ‘I can’t breathe’
An off-duty Kansas City police officer restrained and brought down a man in a Kansas City grocery store with a move similar to a chokehold Wednesday, in an incident filmed and widely circulated online.
The incident took place around 4 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Kansas City Police Department, between an off-duty officer working in a security role at Sun Fresh Market Linwood and a patron of the grocery store.
A video clip of the incident shared on social media Wednesday by a Kansas City man shopping at Sun Fresh, 3110 Wabash Avenue, shows a man in a security guard uniform and police vest restraining a man from behind with an arm around his neck. In the video, the officer can be seen applying more pressure to the man’s neck with his other arm while the man attempts to rise from his kneeling position.
As the man rises, the officer can be seen forcing him back to his knees, then flipping him flat to the ground and holding him there with his entire body, holding one leg on either side of the man’s body while the man writhes. The officer is shown maintaining his neck hold on the man throughout the video.
The Kansas City resident who filmed the video wrote on social media that before he began filming, the off-duty officer spoke with the man before allegedly seizing him around the neck from behind.
“I guess he didn’t like what the man was saying so the officer grabbed him around the neck, choked him and slammed him on the ground,” the social media post sharing the video reads. “The man put his hands behind his back. and then he started tapping out, but the officer continued to choke him, so that’s when I started recording.”
Kansas City Police Department spokesperson Officer Alayna Gonzalez said in a statement the officer had learned that the man had allegedly brought a gun into the store, and told him that was not permitted. Later, the man was asked to leave the store after an altercation with the officer and the store manager, but was placed under arrest for trespassing when he refused, according to Gonzalez.
“He resisted arrest and became combative,” Gonzalez wrote Thursday.
In the video, the man can be heard saying “I can’t breathe” and “stop choking me” while the officer tells him to put his hands behind his back. The man can also be heard saying that he had previously brought his gun out to his car.
In KCPD’s statement, Gonzalez said that the restrictive neck hold shown in the video was a lateral vascular neck restraint, or LVNR, and that neither the man nor the officer was injured during the arrest.
The department also wrote the video clip “unfortunately does not show the totality of events.” The social media user who uploaded the video was unavailable for comment Thursday evening.
KCPD officers have been using the LVNR technique for more than 50 years. The department has said that while the move looks like a chokehold or stranglehold, it’s intended to be safer than a chokehold while making it less likely that an officer has to “pull a gun” during an arrest.
Critics say that the LVNR should not be regarded as a safe move for officers to use, as it restricts blood flow to the brain. Improper use of the LVNR can restrict someone’s airway, causing them to lose consciousness or sustain a traumatic injury, critics say.
After the incident, the man was taken to a KCPD detention facility, according to Gonzalez, where he was issued a summons for trespassing and resisting arrest. The incident will face internal review from the “entire patrol bureau chain of command,” as is KCPD policy, according to Gonzalez.
KCPD declined to comment on whether the department considers the incident to be an excessive use of force, and how the department has classified the level of force used in the incident.
KCPD also declined to comment on why the officer shown in the video opted to use the neck restraint, and declined to issue a response to social media users decrying the incident as excessive use of force.
